


nights these days are so unkind (but the dawn is coming)

by Serie11



Series: these broken pieces (can be made into a new whole) [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crying, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Family, Family Bonding, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kairi Lives, M/M, Minor Naminé/Xion (Kingdom Hearts), Multi, Murder aftermath, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-graphic Murder, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Pre-Relationship, Recovery, Sora (Kingdom Hearts) Needs a Hug, Sora Lives, Vanitas Lives, drifting apart and coming back together, i love this family sm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 17:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18266045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Sora does not know how to go back to a normal life on the islands when he’s so used to having a Keyblade in his hands. Kairi is used to the idyllic peace, but her fears lurk in the background of her thoughts, always waiting for a chance to strike. Riku does not want to go back to what his life was before, and does not intend to. Naminé knows nothing but cold, white walls, and the sand and sun is all so very new to her.Sora, Kairi, Riku and Naminé, post KH3





	nights these days are so unkind (but the dawn is coming)

**Author's Note:**

> Note that this fic proceeds under the assumption that Kairi and Sora did not share a paopu fruit during KHIII

 

The Χ-blade shines bright in his hands, a single star in the barren sky of the desert. Sora tucks his chin to his chest, sets his jaw. Takes a breath, and brings it down.

Xehanort does not deserve any final words.

* * *

 

Kairi is the one who pulls Sora away. She is the first to move and the first to touch him and the first to hug him. Riku is a close second, and Kairi can only welcome his warmth as he stands guard over the two of them, eyes keen for any danger, any movement that might remain to threaten them.

She is the first one to suggest that they leave, and the last one to step off the desert sand. She does not regret that, even as she feels the icy tendrils of this place try to freeze her steps, even as she feels the fear sink into her bones.

She hops up into the gummi ship anyway.

* * *

 

They all go back to Yen Sid’s Tower to regroup, and Riku lays next to Sora when he shakes awake because of a nightmare, and then cries as the events of the day catch up to him. Kairi helps comfort him; none of them get much sleep. Not so much because of Sora, than because they don’t want their own dreams to take them. Sora and Kairi are both overly peppy in the morning to compensate, while Riku can write off his own surliness as normal.

Everyone is okay – well, mostly okay. Ven has brought back Vanitas and the darkness that boy exudes scratches at his skin. It’s a painful reminder, but Riku looks at Aqua’s glares and Terra’s silence and Ven’s optimism and almost feels sorry for him.

They brought an empty body back with them in the gummi ship, and Riku feels a duty to it, and to the person who he promised. He holds Sora and Kairi tight before he leaves, taking the gummi ship and gently placing the empty body beside him.

* * *

 

The first thing she sees is brightness.

It is a white light that is too reminiscent of Castle Oblivion. It hurts her newly formed heart, and she flinches away from it. There is noise but she cannot quite seem to hear what people are saying. When she opens her eyes she can only blink through her tears to see Riku’s face.

He holds out his hand, a smile curling his lips. Naminé takes her first breath and hesitantly reaches out to take his hand.

The warm roughness of his palm is the first thing she feels.

* * *

 

Riku goes back to Yen Sid’s Tower, and Naminé stays with Ienzo and Aeleus. They say that she needs time and space to heal, and Naminé smiles gently at him and says she will be okay. Riku promises her that he will be back to pick her up as soon as they send him a text saying she can be moved. Naminé nods and thanks him and he tells her that there is no need for thanks; she has been without a body for too long. Giving one back to her is something he deeply agrees with.  

Kairi and Sora welcome him back with open arms, and he finds that Roxas, Lea and Xion have left. Lea is burning to try and find Isa, and has dragged his two friends along for the ride. Riku reports his success with Naminé, and Kairi cheers.

Sora is the one to suggest that they go home to the islands, a day later. Riku agrees with him. It’s time to go home.

* * *

 

Sora and Riku collapse into the sand of the beach like it’s a lifeline. Kairi hasn’t been away for that long, not like them. Even during her training, she came back and visited when she wanted to. She was never really _kept away_ from home like they have been. Never had to long for the islands and never been able to go back to them.  

Riku stands with his feet in the water and Sora sinks his hands into the sand and both of them look so relieved to be somewhere they know. Kairi doesn’t disturb them, but she stays close, closer than perhaps she should. They need their space, but she can’t bring herself to give it them. She thinks she’s afraid that if she looks away for too long they’ll be gone, wisps of salt disappearing under the island sun. Her two boys, full of dreams and light and stardust. Sometimes she’s sure that she must have imagined them, but here they are on the beach once again, silhouettes against the blue sky.

She’s never letting them go. Never again.

* * *

 

Sora greets his parents sheepishly, home from another adventure. His mum cries and his father wraps him in a hug and Sora escapes to his room as quickly as he can because it doesn’t feel right to touch them. He’s travelled so far and seen so much and his hands are strong and capable of so many things. Good things and bad things and things that Sora never thought he would be able to do.

The memory of the X-blade haunts his sleep.

( _He was so powerful with it in his hands. And his hands remember that feeling, and shake with it when he dwells on it for too long._ )

* * *

 

Riku’s parents have always been distant. Hardworking, yes; there for him if he needed something, yes. Emotionally available? Not quite.

Riku lived as a fisherman’s son and his earliest memories are of being out on the waves, handing his father fish hooks and line and sorting out catches with his mother to take to market, fish slippery and slimy in his small hands, salt caked against his skin.

But his mother wanted a daughter and his father never had the time or emotional capacity or desire to want to bond with him. Riku skulks home and leaves a note on the kitchen counter telling them that he is back. They deserve that much, but he doesn’t feel guilty when he leaves after raiding his own closet for clothes that still fit him after his growth spurt. He takes his keys that have more keychains than keys on them thanks to Kairi’s habit of giving him all her bead projects, and leaves everything else.

* * *

 

Kairi has always loved her father, and he has always loved her. A permanent bachelor, he had not expected to ever have children, but when she had washed up on the island shores he had been the first ready to take responsibility for her. The house they live in is the biggest on the islands, but only because it doubles in function as a town hall.

She has never had the long absences that Sora and Riku have, and her father is glad to see her back and safe. There is no lurking fear in him that she knows rests in Sora’s mother’s eyes. They go down to the markets together because Kairi says that Riku is sleeping over tonight and her father says that he needs to go shopping if they all want food for dinner. It is familiar but jarring. Kairi feels on edge among the people at the markets and her throat is dry and she wants to see Riku and Sora. Riku is coming over soon, she tells herself, but it is not enough.

When she sees him standing outside their gate she drops the shopping and sprints towards him to seize him in a hug. Riku puts a hand on the back of her neck and she thinks he understands.

* * *

 

When Ienzo tells her that she’s stable enough to leave, he gives her a gummi phone and says that it’s _hers,_ hers to keep. There are already several numbers programmed in and she hesitantly clicks on Riku’s name. She knows enough about computers and how they work from DiZ but this one is so small and feels odd in her hands. Computers should be larger for all the power they contain; then again, she knows something about being powerful but appearing diminutive.

Riku picks up the phone and tells her that he will be there as soon as he can. Naminé carefully shows that she’s ready to leave by walking across the room under Aeleus’s supervision. She can walk further than before, but things still feel shaky. Ienzo says that it’s because this replica was damaged in battle before she came to use it, and there are some things that he  can’t fix and she will have to get used to because of that.

Naminé accepts that easily. This body is proof that someone _remembered_ her, someone _cared_ for her. She does not agree to Ienzo’s offer to give her a new one.

* * *

 

Kairi is the one who greets Riku and Naminé when they reach the islands. Naminé’s eyes are wide as she takes in the crisp air and blue skies and the salt on the wind.

“I’ve only seen this in other people’s dreams. I didn’t realise it really is this beautiful.”

Naminé admits this with down turned eyes, as if it’s an issue that she has not been to the islands before. Kairi puts her hand on Riku’s arm and his solidness grounds her. Seeing him get into that gummi ship had –

She takes a breath. They are safe now. He’s standing beside her once more.

( _Seeing him get into that gummi ship had stolen her breath. He was leaving leaving leaving_ again _and there was nothing she could do about it._ )

* * *

 

Sora is glad that Naminé has chosen to come and live with them on the islands – Kairi’s dad has said that she can live in his house and Sora had helped the two girls move a spare bedframe into the spare bedroom and had gone with Riku to buy her a sketchpad and some crayons and pencils as a welcoming present. Naminé had quietly thanked them all and Sora had said that it was no problem at all. He makes an excuse as to why he can’t stay for dinner and escapes out of the room.

Naminé has hurt him and he has hurt her and he doesn’t want anything to go wrong on her first night. If he was there, it might. Sora doesn’t want to take that chance.

* * *

 

Kairi puts on a brave face but she knows the others see through it.

Being seized by Xehanort so suddenly, she had felt like she was hanging there for a lifetime, even though it had only been seconds. She’d been swamped by a wave of helplessness and fear and resignation against that power.

Riku and Sora had flown in and distracted him and shaken her out of that state of mind. They had all fought back and in that last struggle where Kairi flew alongside Sora and Riku she had felt some strange combination of invincible and weak. But she had covered for Sora and Sora had covered for Riku and Riku had covered for her, and they had won and Sora had struck that final blow.

But even though they have won she still feels that shaking fear sitting in the back of her mind, patient for a time when it can rise up and sink into her again. It’s ridiculous. They are safe on the islands ( _except for when the land itself rose up and betrayed them – covered the whole world in darkness_ ). She cannot feel the curling darkness in anyone but Riku, and she thinks that is because he is the only one who consciously manipulates it in this world. It’s ironic that she feels safest around him – but Riku is more in tune with the darkness of the islands and the night, and she knows he would be the first one to feel if anything was wrong. And when she asks him he says that the islands are safe and have a healthy balance and that nothing should go wrong again. Kairi tells him she believes him, and then tells herself the same thing. Maybe if she repeats it enough times it will become true.

* * *

 

Sora struggles with his slippery feelings and does not know how to confront them – he does not really know what they are. That is making it far harder than it should be to talk about the shaky feeling he gets when he summons his Keyblade but he’s lost for words when he tries to talk about it. Kairi has gently asked him if he needs to talk about anything, and Riku has reminded him that it’s okay to relax now that they’re not fighting every day.

Sora knows this. Obviously. But he can’t quite seem to put it into practise.

* * *

 

Naminé edges into the places where Kairi leaves and tries not to feel like a shadow.

Kairi is bright and her laugh and light fills up the room. Naminé can’t help but feel subpar when compared to that, but she knows Kairi does not do it on purpose. She’s too good to ever do it on purpose.

She is not made to feel unwelcome, no – Riku talks to her daily, and Sora sometimes finds her when she’s standing on the beach. Kairi has tried to strike up conversations so many times, but Naminé can’t help but feel guilty for what she did – she knows Kairi like Sora knows Kairi, because she spent so much time seeped in his memories that she has to resist trading in-jokes with her, and saying things that she shouldn’t know, because she shouldn’t know them. She stole this knowledge from Sora, and sometimes she didn’t give it back. She sees it when Sora asks Kairi what her favourite food is ( _Naminé knows the answer_ ) or when he asks how she got a scar above her elbow, obviously fishing for a training story. Naminé could have told him that he was there when she received that injury, but she folds in on herself without moving and hopes they do not ask why Sora does not know these things.

She did not mean to steal these memories from him after everything else she has done, but putting things back together in Sora’s heart was never an easy thing to do, and sometimes memories just… didn’t fit where they were supposed to. So she’d kept them, another reminder of the boy she’d manipulated into loving her.

She thinks Riku knows. Riku knows a lot, but he does not judge her for it. She appreciates that. If there was anyone who she wouldn’t mind showing her vulnerable side to, it would be him. ( _No it wouldn’t. She would prefer it to be the boy who looks like him. The boy she toyed with and left behind and who was still kind to her even when he didn’t need to be._ )

She finds a space in Kairi’s shadow and makes it her own. Maybe in the future she can leave it, but for now it is what she knows, and she knows so little in this new life that this one thing stabilises her. With its support, perhaps she can reach out and discover something new, something new that she can keep to herself only. Perhaps.

* * *

 

Kairi always thought that coming back to the islands would fix everything, but sometimes she thinks it has made everything worse.

Sora and Riku are trying so hard, but they sometimes feel like strangers and Kairi dawdles when going to bed, knowing that Riku will be there already, reading one of her books or frowning over a puzzle she has made for him. She knows it is Riku, obviously, just like she knows it is Sora. But their journeys have shaped them into someone different than she remembers from their childhood.

Maybe this is just a part of growing up.

She slowly stitches together her relationship with Riku, and they do it consciously, as grown people instead of the unthinking assumptions of children. She asks about his boundaries. He asks about hers. They carefully tread around each other and Kairi doesn’t even really consider it a chore, because she wants to get to know him again. Riku feels the same way, and slowly it feels like relief when she opens her bedroom door and he is there. She can tell him anything and he will listen to her and support her.

Sora is a different story.

Kairi wants to be with Sora, in a funny way that melts her insides. Sora has grown more visibly than Riku, and they have grown apart even more. He still wears her charm at his belt, visible whenever she sees him. She thinks he is trying. His words are stilted and awkward and Riku admits that he is worried as well, but there is little either of them can do besides be there for him when he does want to hang out with them. That declines faster than Kairi could have ever thought, until he disappears when she sees him. Riku tells her that he has to corner Sora if he wants to talk to him, and Sora does not seek him out.

It disquiets both of them. Sora was always the happiest, loudest, most cheerful of all of them. But Kairi almost appreciates this step back. She can interact with Riku on their terms, and she can convince the hard clenching in her chest that not seeing Sora every day is not the end of the world. Every time she catches a glimpse of Sora, even if it just him disappearing off the beach or on the other side of the market, she feels more like the self she remembers.

But she still wants to talk to him. There’s obviously something eating at him, something big, but she doesn’t want to push him before he’s ready. He has always been the most emotionally aware of any of them, and she trusts him with his feelings, and trusts him enough to give him space. So she tangles her fingers with Riku as they walk along the streets of the main island and watch the sunset from the play island together, Sora’s absence hanging over both their heads.

They’re willing to wait.

* * *

 

Sora skates the edges of his old life and does not know how to stitch them into the weave of his new one. The life where he can jump over houses and glide above the length of the beach and cast giant fireballs.

It’s a process. And he thinks he might be struggling with it.

* * *

 

He is still Sora’s dreameater, in that he can always feel when Sora is having a nightmare.

He and Kairi tend to sleep together more often than not, but Sora has pulled away from them after coming home, so Riku has to sneak up his driveway and phase through the wall of his bedroom to get to him. Sora is still in his bed, blankets rucked up around him. Nothing betrays his dream except the flicker of his eyes under his eyelids and the pulsing in Riku’s chest.

Riku puts a hand on Sora’s forehead. He is no longer in the realm of sleep, and he does not think he has his dreameater powers anymore. He cannot fight the nightmare with his Keyblade and his teeth, even if he wanted to. He settles for waking Sora instead, who jolts up in his bed and almost breaks Riku’s nose.

“Riku?”

Riku slides a hand through his hair and Sora looks at him from slitted eyes and pulls him down to rest beside him. Riku goes, because that’s his job – he will do whatever it takes to protect Sora, from whatever might hurt him. Even if that something is Sora himself.

* * *

 

Naminé does not know what she is supposed to be doing in this new life.

Kairi tells her to take some time to get acquainted with the islands and the people living here. Sora tells her to do whatever she wants to do. Riku tells her to take the time to get to know herself.

None of these things directly benefit them in any way.

She knows that this fear is irrational and that Kairi’s father has welcomed her into his home without any strings attached. But she cannot shake the fear that they are all waiting, waiting, until she has let down her guard. Sora is too kind and Riku is too careful and Kairi would never consider hurting her, but she can’t bring herself to let go of this fear. She curls up on herself and does not let her walls down.

* * *

 

Riku sleeps in Kairi’s bed but does not tell her about the darkness that gnaws at him, the fear that won’t leave him. She brushes her hands over his shoulders and he resists the urge to flinch, she hugs him and he can’t bring himself to hug her back. There is a disconnect between how he feels and how he acts and he does not know which is worse: his flinches or his thoughts.

Kairi is full of light and he should not be around her with no one else there. She is strong and powerful in her own right, but Riku still feels like he is undercutting that strength when he leans on it, depending on Kairi’s soft spoken words to reassure him and comfort him. He thinks that Kairi needs that comfort too, but he is so unsure how to give it or if she wants it from him. She has always been closer to Sora, but Sora has distanced himself from both of them, giving the excuse that he is focusing on the schoolwork he needs to catch up before the new school year starts so he can be in the same year as Kairi. Kairi has offered to tutor him but he laughed lightly and says that he thinks he needs to figure it out on his own.

Sora has never been one to sit down and do bookwork, always taking a hands on approach. Riku cannot imagine he is getting much done by himself, but he does not know how to approach the problem when he has been rebuffed. Kairi tells him that she is worried too, but she thinks that Sora will come to them when he’s ready. Riku can only hope that she’s right.

* * *

 

Naminé sketches, and carefully finds the edges of her powers again.

She thinks that they have changed with her new body. Before, she could reorganise Sora’s memories by drawing new ones to overlay the old. She does not try to do that to him again, but she can tell that these new drawings do not have the gleam of potential erasure in them. They are simply charcoal and paper, bright crayon on white.

But she is still not quite human, even now. A part of that she attributes to this new body. It is not human either, no matter how convincing it first appears. Most of it is because she was never human to begin with – a ghost within a wisp within a body that was less than whole.

She traces the landscape of her new room and the view from her window and she finds a spot on the beach that she likes and she draws the island where Sora, Riku and Kairi spent so much of their childhoods. She lets her hands draw what they want to, and when she looks down at the paper it’s covered in doodles of the three of them as children, as awkward, young teens, foraying into the dangers of the outside world, and the dangers of showing their feelings for each other. They are memories that Naminé should not have access to and yet here they are, spread across her knees, bare for the world to see.

She carefully closes her notebook.

* * *

 

Kairi wakes one night from a particularly bad nightmare and pants harshly for several seconds before putting her face in her hands and resisting the urge to sob. She jerks in surprise as something moves next to her, but it’s just Riku. He’s been sleeping here ever since they came back and she should not be surprised at him anymore but he can be very quiet when he wants to be.

“Kairi?”

She swallows whatever sound she was going to make in response and fumbles at him until she finds his hand. Riku lets her hold it in the dark as she gathers herself together and then sighs. He’s still lying down, but she can feel how tense he is.

“You alright?”

She hums a positive and he sits, running his hand up her arm to put his hand on her shoulder. The contact makes her shiver. Riku pulls her in close and Kairi wraps her arms around him tightly.

“We’re not okay either, are we?”

Riku doesn’t answer her question for a long time. When he finally does, he sighs first.

“No… No, I don’t think we are.”

Kairi hugs him tighter.

“I’m scared.”

Riku doesn’t say anything but she can feel his agreement. Kairi clears her throat before speaking again.

“Just because we’re scared now doesn’t mean we’re going to be scared forever. I think Sora was forced face it faster because he couldn’t hide it as well as we can hide it from ourselves. He’s always been bad at lying.”

Riku nods, and she feels it against her shoulder even though she can’t see.

“Kairi… what were you dreaming about?”

It’s an invitation, and a threat and an opening. Kairi shudders and opens her mouth and lets her fears drip out of it, oily on her tongue.

* * *

 

Riku holds Kairi’s confessions close to his heart, just as he knows that she holds his. He holds her kiss somewhere deeper in his soul, that confession almost as important to him as the other.

They’re stronger together. He’s always known that, but this is just more proof that he probably shouldn’t have needed.

* * *

 

Naminé finds peace in the ocean. Maybe this is why Sora and Riku always longed to go back to their islands – the ocean does not lie. It cannot. It is a force and it is upfront about its power and it does not lie to her and she understands it as much as she understands any person.

Maybe. She understands that Sora, Kairi and Riku want her to life here with them, safely and happily.

She does not know _why._

* * *

 

Sora does not want to distance himself from his friends but every second he spends close to them makes him feel like he is about to implode. He’s shaky and nervous and angry in a way that he’s used to only coming out when blackness drips from his fingers and he lets the rage consume him until it’s gone and he’s left, spent, to deal with the aftermath.

But there are no enemies here and no reason to let that dripping darkness out so he holds it all inside and does not tell Riku that his heart hurts and does not tell Kairi that he wants to scream. It doesn’t make sense. It’s over – they’re home. It’s not fair – there’s no reason for him to be feeling like this. He should be the happiest he’s ever been, with so many friends and with the knowledge that everyone he loves is safe.

He is not happy and he does not let that show when he smiles, slightly too wide for it to be real.

* * *

 

Kairi dreams; of battles and victories, of quiet peace, and of the thud of her heart when she’s certain that someone she loves is about to die.

Riku sleeps in Kairi’s bed and she presses her face into the back of his neck and lets the tickle of his hair comfort her when she wakes up from a half formed nightmare. She doesn’t usually dream, but after getting back the only dreams she has had have been nightmares. They’re worse when Riku isn’t here, and she thinks that must be because she can’t reach out and feel him, right there next to her.

She dreams about the final battle, about Xehanort’s fist around her neck, about Riku and Sora disappearing again and leaving her behind. She dreams about the weight of a Keyblade heavy in her hand but then gone the next second and she dreams about falling. She doesn’t know what, if anything, the dreams mean. Or why she’s having them.

She does know that she wants to sleep through the night again. It’s not fair that even after all their enemies have been defeated, they continue to haunt her sleeping hours.

* * *

 

Naminé is not used to dreaming; she never used to. She supposes that Nobodies do not dream – or maybe it was her position as something stranger and slighter than a Nobody that meant she never saw anything when she slept.

Now she does.

She dreams in colours, in crayon lines and the edges of paper. These drawings have not come from her hands but have bloomed from her mind, and more than once she wakes up and flings herself into her drawings to try and capture the images. The drawings never come out quite the same, but she is satisfied with them anyway. She’s learning this, like so many other things.

* * *

 

Riku does not dream anymore; he remembers what it is like, but since coming back from the Mark of Mastery exam he has never had another dream. He knows when Sora is dreaming, and he can pull him out of those dreams if he chooses. He thinks that maybe he could still eat them, too, but he has not tried. He does not know what that will do to his real body, and there is no real reason to attempt it besides his own curiosity.

He wonders sometimes if he should be grateful for the lack of dreams.

Kairi dreams, and her tossing and turning wake him often. Sora dreams, and Riku sneaks into his house if they are bad ones and wake him from his sleep. That is the only time Sora will accept his touch anymore, when he is sleep drowsy and vulnerable and hurting. He will curl around Sora and run his hands through his hair while Sora drifts back to sleep, and he will leave in the morning before Sora wakes up because the only time he had stayed Sora had pushed him away and that had hurt more than leaving beforehand does.

He guards his friends as best he is able, and strikes down each darkly formed thought when it comes into his reach.

He can reach them less often than he would like.

* * *

 

Sora’s dreams seem more tangible than his waking hours; he feels sometimes that he is back in the Realm of Sleep, when he was not certain that anything was real. He was always so close with his parents when he was younger, but there’s a disconnect there now that he cannot seem to close – his mother’s talk of her soap carving and handicrafts seem so quaint and he cannot feel connection to his father and his work fishing for crabs and shellfish.

He should be spending this time talking to Riku and Kairi and Naminé and finally knitting together their story over the last few years. He wants to know what Kairi found when she first came back to the islands, he wants to know how Riku escaped the Realm of Darkness the first time. He wants to know Naminé’s story, even though there’s a part of him that insists that he already does. His cheerful countenance does him well, and his parents and the people of the island don’t see through it to his sombre emotional state.

It would be a lot more convincing if he could bring himself to talk to Riku and Kairi, at least. But he feels so – uncertain, around them now. He doesn’t quite know what to say or how to act, and while he’s sure that they don’t care about that, something else inside him holds him back.

He talks to Naminé first.

She’s sitting down on the beach where he’s seen her multiple times, her sketchbook in her hands. He wonders, suddenly, if she really wants to be here, drawing, or if that’s another habit, too. Just like how he can launch himself downstairs cheerfully, scoff down breakfast and run out the door and his parents seem glad for the return to routine. Has Naminé ever really had a choice?

“Hello, Sora.”

“Hey Naminé.”

He sits down beside her and peeks over her shoulder. It’s not a landscape drawing of the beach, but a memory he’s trying to forget – the harsh brown of the Keyblade Graveyard, and the brightly shining light of the X-blade. Sora can’t bring himself to look away from his own face. On the day of the battle he was quiet and determined and blank faced, but in the drawing Naminé is making, he is crying, fat tears sliding down his face to drop down to the dusty ground.

“You didn’t have to do it, you know. Riku would have. Or Aqua, or Mickey.”

Her voice is so quiet he can barely hear her over the quiet _shush, shush_ of the waves, as if the beach itself wants to silence them from talking about something horrific that happened so far from its shores.

“I had the X-blade.”

“You could have passed it on.”

“I didn’t want to waste the chance I had.”

“He was defeated.”

“I was… there.”

“So were the others.”

She sighs, and flips her sketchbook to another page. Sora isn’t in this picture, not quite – it is Riku and Kairi, Kairi clinging to Riku’s side. She looks scared – he looks like he’s caught between resignation and sadness. Sora knows that this is how they looked, right after he had –

“They saw what you did.”

It’s as strong a blow as Sora has ever felt. He staggers and falls, the sand catching him like it always has. He stares at Naminé and she looks back, quiet but unmovable. He looks aside, but he cannot escape the truth laid between them so easily.

“I wish –”

Sora cuts himself off. He does not know what he wishes, or what he wants. The person who had ripped him from the idyllic peace of the islands is gone, by his own hand. Gone, would never bother them again, would never touch the people he loves or be a threat to anyone because he is –

He is –

Dead.

“He’s dead.”

He’s finally admitting it to himself, not Naminé. She already knew. She probably heard it from Ienzo when he was monitoring her to ensure that she could leave his labs. Or from Riku, when he brought her here. It doesn’t matter the source. She _knows_ what he did.

“You still have power over my memories, don’t you? You couldn’t know what they looked like. You weren’t there. And no one would have described them to you like that.”

Naminé nods once. Her hands don’t move from where they’re laid on her sketchbook, her fingers framing Kairi and Riku’s faces.

“Can you still change them? Erase them, like before?”

“Even if I could, I would not take that memory from you. I could never erase your memories, not really. Just overlay them. The real ones were still in your heart. You would still be hurting like this. You just wouldn’t know why.”

Sora wriggles his fingers deep into the sand, letting the roughness coat his hands. Naminé’s voice is disapproving, but there’s a touch of sadness in it as well. He swallows.

“What do I do?”

She shakes her head.

“You can’t ask me that, Sora. I can’t find the answers for you, and even if I did, you wouldn’t be satisfied with them because you didn’t come up with them yourself. But…”

She tilts her head as she pauses. Sora looks up at her to find her looking out over the ocean towards the play island, a wistful expression in the set of her eyes.

“You don’t really want to be talking to me about this. Go and find your friends.”

“You’re my friend too!”

“Am I? Or have I just imposed myself on your life here?”

It’s the opposite of what he’d been thinking, and Sora can’t help but snort a laugh at both of them. Him, thinking that he had forced Naminé into staying here; her, thinking that she isn’t welcome. Sora jumps forwards and grabs her hands, even though his are coated in gritty sand. He can feel callouses on her fingers, ones he recognises as mirroring his own from holding a toy sword when he was younger, and a Keyblade now. Another legacy from the Riku who left her this body.

“You are my friend, Naminé. You care about me, and I care about you. We have a shared history – a shared past, even if I can’t remember some of it. We’ve hurt each other before, but you helped put me back together again. We’re here together on the islands, and I know I haven’t exactly been around much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you here. We are friends, right?”

She hesitates, but he takes no offense in that hesitation. She’s been hurt before, and if she hesitates then it means that she’s honestly thinking things over, and that she is showing her honest self to him. He can only be flattered by that.

“Yes, we are.”

He breaks out into a huge smile, the first genuine one he’s worn in weeks. It feels good.

“Thank you, Naminé.”

A faint tinge of pink stains her cheeks, but she smiles, too.

* * *

 

A day before school is supposed to go back, Riku opens Kairi’s front door to find Sora on the doorstep, looking nervous and faintly green. Riku looks at him for a long few seconds, unsure of his next course of action, but then Sora smiles faintly at him, and he feels like collapsing. Awkward and still grinning anyway – that’s what Riku remembers the most about Sora. To see that person in front of him again is a relief.

Riku steps back and lets Sora inside and tells him that Kairi’s dad is away dealing with an issue on one of the smaller islands today. Kairi thunders down the steps and is halfway asking who it is before she sees Sora, and then she throws herself over the barrier to launch herself right into Sora’s arms. Sora staggers but he catches her, and Riku can’t help the tiny chuckle that escapes him at the sight.

Sora pouts at him but Riku can tell that it’s not serious. This too is familiar. Riku captures them both in his arms and can’t help marvelling over how tall he’s gotten. It feels good to wind his arms around the two of them and hold them close.

Sora asks if he can talk to them, his voice muffled because he has his face pressed into Riku’s shoulder. Kairi pulls them both up to her room and Sora flops on the bed and sighs.

His words aren’t stable – Riku can tell that he has tried to order them into something rehearsed but he keeps backtracking and muttering and talking around some things until he rushes into them. He tells them about his nightmares and he apologises for his distance. He says that he needed time to come to grips with what he had done and that he’s not going to wall the two of them out anymore.

Riku looks at Kairi. She’s playing with the blanket on her bed, running the fabric between her fingers. She takes a breath and tells him that she is not exactly over that last battle either, and that she is still scared sometimes and that she has bad dreams about them all losing. Riku adds his own voice to back her up when Sora looks like he’s about to protest. He says that he is still afraid sometimes of his darkness and controlling it, and being around them. Kairi reaches out and takes his hand, and then offers her other hand to Sora. Tears prick at the corners of Sora’s eyes but he takes her hand, and Riku gathers them both up again when Kairi joins him in crying.

They are not okay. But he thinks that this is the first step they have to take before they can get there.

* * *

 

Naminé carefully shades in the colour on Riku’s hair. It’s not white, and it’s not grey, and it takes careful consideration before she draws it.

In the picture the three of them are crying, but they are healing tears.

* * *

 

Kairi is glad that Sora let everything out before school started, because it means that she can sit next to him in class and gently bully him into doing his homework. Sora had been shocked that morning when he had turned up in his school uniform – he hadn’t stayed the night – and only Kairi had been in hers. Riku was standing in his normal gear, and Sora had boggled at him and accused him of growing so large that there was no uniform that could fit him anymore. Riku had laughed and told him that he wasn’t going back to school. It’s another thing that Sora had missed in the distance between them, and it’s awkward for a second before Kairi says that Riku’s giant stature wouldn’t fit in a classroom anyway.

Naminé meets them and Sora is surprised that she is coming with them, but why wouldn’t she? Naminé tells Sora that she will be in the year below the two of them since she has no schooling, but she hopes to skip next year and join them in their classes then. Sora accepts her presence with good grace and Kairi walks between the two of them and chatters to fill Naminé’s nervous silence and Sora’s slight hesitation.

Sora has always been bright and loud and distractible in class, and while he still gets distracted he is no longer loud. He’s able to focus and he’s aware enough to brush off questions about where Riku is, but he no longer rough houses with Wakka or calls across the classroom to Tidus. Selphie raises an eyebrow but Kairi shakes her head at her, and Selphie asks about how his summer went instead. Sora scratches his head before answering that it’s the strangest summer he’s ever had. Kairi covers a smile at that answer.

Selphie walks with them back towards home together, Sora already begging to ask her questions about the homework. Selphie’s questions are somewhere between polite and prying. She doesn’t know Naminé, and Sora has changed, very obviously. But Sora elbows her gently and asks her about her summer and her family and what she’s looking forward to this year and Selphie gradually relaxes. She might know that something strange is going on, but she won’t exclude Sora from her gossip circle if there’s no cause to.

Kairi lifts her face to the gentle sea breeze and smiles.

* * *

 

While Sora, Naminé and Kairi are at school, Riku visits other worlds. He explores worlds that Sora has told him about, checking on the Princesses of Heart even if he doesn’t talk to them. He finds new worlds that he thinks only he has been to, and solves people’s problems and keeps a sharp watch for any Heartless or Nobodies. He goes to the Land of Departure and asks Master Aqua for histories and books on Keyblades and anything to do with magic and the relationship between darkness and light. Aqua shows him the library they have there and tells him that he is welcome to it. She advises him that some books will only show themselves to a Master, but since he is one, there should be no problem as long as Kairi doesn’t steal what he’s reading.

Riku takes as many books as he can hold and runs into Terra on the way out. The older man still has bleached white hair, and looks tired and worn, but after everything he’s been through Riku hardly blames him. Terra spots what he’s carrying and tells him to come back and ask if he has any questions – he had enough when he was first reading some of the books. Riku thanks him, and wonders at the flash of emotion he sees in Terra’s eyes.

* * *

 

Naminé lives with Kairi and her father – and Riku – but sometimes she feels like she is an outsider to their closeness. Kairi will ask her father about the issues the islands are having and what he’s doing to deal with them, and in their hashed out solutions Naminé sees the bearing of a Princess. Kairi may have left Radiant Garden, but she still carries a strong light within her heart.

Riku comes and goes like a shadow, cooking his own food while Kairi and her father are away from the house. He brings some to her when she’s in her room, or he finds her when she’s sitting somewhere on the islands.

Naminé is content with her drawing, and the newness of school. She’s slowly begun to expand outside of her room, curling around the perimeters of the house and calling it _hers._ Kairi’s father has told her that she can call him her father as well, but Naminé does not know how to deal with that. It is a strange thought. She never expected to have a family at all, let alone a father. She does not know how to act around him, but she is learning that she can act however she wants to.

She watches Kairi’s hard questions and discussions and Riku’s cooking that appears in the fridge and the new art supplies that somehow find their way into her room after she knows Kairi’s father has gone shopping. She claims them as hers but she treasures the thought behind them almost more than the objects themselves. They are proof that she is wanted here, not just tolerated.

* * *

 

Sora finds school life awkward, but that’s almost reassuring. He never liked being cooped up for hours in one place when the beach was right outside, but there’s a difference to his restlessness now. He doesn’t really know how to act around the people who were once his peers – missing a year of school had left him out of the loop on friendships and who was dating who and new in-jokes and rivalries.

He always had to smile on the gummi ship – that’s what it ran on, after all. He got breaks during their visits to worlds, but all too often there was a problem to solve or people to befriend. He doesn’t miss that part of travelling, but he’s beginning to discover that he isn’t sure how to express how he truly feels anymore.

Finally this period of rest is giving him space to process everything he’s felt over the last two years. It’s freeing to be able to frown whenever he wants to.

* * *

 

Riku watches Sora blossom like a flower finally given light. He presses kisses to his cheeks and nose and Sora laughs and wraps his arms around him and kisses him back. It’s like there is joy smeared across his lips, and with every touch Riku lights up with that feeling. They’re together. Nothing can stop them now.

* * *

 

The routine of school, Kairi’s house in the afternoons, his house at night and sometimes visits to other worlds on the weekends is more soothing than Sora could have ever expected it to be. The pattern means he knows what is doing and when he is doing it, and Riku does not mind when he says he would rather stay on the islands even if Kairi tells him that he should come along.

Within that small peace, he starts to stitch himself together.

* * *

 

Naminé finds herself at the table downstairs one day when Kairi’s father arrives home, Kairi and the boys out on the beach. She looks at him, and then shyly asks about his day.

He smiles and sits down and tells her.

* * *

 

Sora finally tells Riku about the darkness he can feel licking at his heels and Riku scolds him but inwardly scolds himself for not recognising it. One weekend night they go out to the play island and Riku checks every nook and cranny to make sure they are alone while Sora nervously makes tracks in the sand. Riku says that he’ll make sure nothing goes wrong and retreats a few steps to stand near the waterfall, nearby but not hovering. Sora looks back at him and Riku nods encouragingly.

Sora takes a deep breath, and when he breathes out he is not standing there anymore. It is a creature of darkness and the night and Riku cannot see it but he can feel where it is by scenting the air. The thing that used to be Sora flows up the shoreline and Riku chases it, careful to keep out of fighting range, but it is far faster than he expected.

They make it to the palm grove and it seems content to chase shadows around the trees, until it suddenly collapses and Sora is lying on the dirt with his arm covering his face. Riku trots up to kneel beside him and Sora grins at him weakly before thanking him. Riku tells him not to be ridiculous and that he can thank him by telling him when he needs to let his darkness out again. Sora reluctantly agrees, and slowly the two of them make their way back to their boat.

Sora expresses his darkness externally in a way that Riku doesn’t. It’s curious, but when Sora leans back and naps with his head in Riku’s lap, leaving Riku to paddle all the way back to the main island, Riku decides that it’s okay that the two of them are different. Too many similarities and they might not be able to cover for each other’s weaknesses.

* * *

 

Sora can still glide and Riku can use doubleflight and Kairi can’t even high jump – she mercilessly teases and picks on them until they take her out to another world and show her how. Fighting as a team against the weak Heartless is still a tense exercise, because Sora is jumpier than he should be and Riku is almost too busy staring at both of them to make sure they’re fine to fight on his own.

Kairi leads by example and throws herself into the fight. She has no problems against enemies like these, and it’s good to see them fall and know that she can do it.

When they’re done, they take a break before Sora sends all of them back to Twilight Town and buys them all ice cream. Kairi thinks the sea-salt reminds her of something, but she supposes it might just be the sea.

They see Roxas and Xion, and Kairi invites them both to the islands, anytime they want. The two seem interested in the idea and she hugs them both, even though Xion is stiff and Roxas doesn’t know what to do with his hands, just like Riku. She chuckles to herself as she thinks that – both of them would probably dislike the comparison.

* * *

 

Riku spends mornings reading on Kairi’s dining table and afternoons sparring with his friends ( _including Naminé, sometimes; she holds her wooden sword overhand just like him and Riku wonders if this is another legacy from the boy who shared his face_ ). His nights are spent with Kairi or Sora or both, but sometimes he leaves their soft dreams and finds himself on the beach with only the waves for company.

He needs time to breathe, too. To let his guard down and not immediately yank it back up. It’s a luxury, but the islands allow him this, and Riku finds peace in the dark and the water.

* * *

 

Naminé feels the world shift when she’s in her usual spot on the beach, and tracks the disruption in the world a few hundred metres down towards town, where she spots the lingering wisps of a dark portal. In front of the portal are two people she recognises, so she comes out from behind the brush bushes and waves to them.

Xion and Roxas approach her gratefully, and she carefully inquires as to their presence. When they say that Kairi invited them, she relaxes. There is no danger.

She shows them the beach and her spot and some of her drawings, which both of them marvel at for too long. When they leave they haven’t even seen the others, but she thinks that they might have preferred to get the lay of the land before they confronted the people who live here. She sends them off, and her heart is lighter than normal when she heads back home.

* * *

 

Sora breathes.

Sometimes there is nothing else he needs to do, to make the stormy feeling in his heart recede. If he tries to shove it away and bottle it up it explodes and the glass cuts him, but if he lets it stream out of him in his breath, steam from the fires of his anger, he can deal with that. He feels so, so much better after talking to Riku and Naminé and Kairi, but it has not fixed it. Just brings it out into the open where it can be fought instead of slinking around in the shadows where it can hamstring him any time it wants.

He has his friends and his schoolwork and the peace of the islands, and he grips Kairi’s lucky charm in his hand and lets himself breathe.

* * *

 

Kairi is still scared.

She thinks that is normal. Surely, everyone, everywhere, gets scared sometimes. She has always been one to stick her tongue out at the fear and run in spite of it, not because of it, and so it is even now. She laughs louder, runs faster, jumps higher, teases more.

The shadow over her heart fades with every bright island day. She will never be the same girl that she was before, but her new shape compliments her experiences and growth, and she loves it.  

* * *

 

Riku does not feel the need to dwell solely in the shadows anymore.

He knows that he can, he knows that the light will not sear him – or at least, not Kairi or Sora’s lights. They burn so vividly that sometimes he can hardly bring himself to look at them, but he knows that they find space in his darkness just like he appreciates their light.

He has time to find his centre, and he takes it. He finds himself in waves on the shore and the deep breath he takes before diving into the ocean. He discovers it in trips to other worlds, between the pages of old books Aqua has lent him, in between the spaces of stars in the sky. In Sora’s eyes, and Kairi’s smile.

* * *

 

Naminé does not know if she belongs to the islands or to the people living there.

Even now, she is on the outside. She thinks that she might prefer that, in some ways. Being _known_ is a terrifying concept. She does not know how Sora, Kairi and Riku spill their hearts to each other, how they take ownership of each other’s pain not because they have stolen it but because it was given.

Her friends are always there if she wants to talk to them, and she has begun asking Riku to take her to Twilight Town where she meets up with Roxas and Xion. Sometimes it’s just Xion, and the two of them explore Twilight Town together. Naminé never had the time and was not allowed when she lived there with DiZ, and Xion admits that she was always on missions when she came here, except for the time at the ends of days when she would eat ice cream on the clock tower with Roxas and Axel.

They find corners and shops and sewers and forests and rooftops and train lines and hills and sunsets together, and sometimes Naminé wonders if _this_ is where she might learn to exist, after all.

* * *

 

All of them are invited to Ventus and Vanitas’s seventeenth birthday party in the Land of Departure, and Sora agonises over gifts while Kairi wonders what they should wear. Riku was the one to receive the invitations from Ventus, and he tells them that they don’t have to do anything other than bring themselves.

They are not the first to arrive, but Terra asks them for help bringing out food. Sora brags about how he can carry more than Riku and Riku sprints after him just to make sure he doesn’t do something silly like casting an aero to carry all the food and spilling it everywhere. The Land of Departure is not big, but the castle is eerily silent inside, and Riku feels his hair standing on end even as he fights to take the most unstable looking platters so Sora has less chance of spilling anything when he trips over his own feet.

He remembers Castle Oblivion. Kairi was never there. Sora knows that he was, but his expression goes blank whenever it is mentioned. Neither of them know it like he does, and that is one thing he is truly glad of. It was not a place he particularly wants to remember. Riku escapes the castle and is glad that the party is being held in the courtyard outside.

* * *

 

Kairi takes up her craftsmanship again. She’s not as good as Sora when it comes to carving, but she can sew and make bead animals and craft what she wants. She finally finds a fifth Thalassa shell and makes another good luck charm. She doesn’t decorate this one with a smiling face, but she does engrave stars across one side of it. When she gives it to Riku he almost cries, which surprises her until she thinks about it. She leans up to kiss him and he curls one arm around her, the other held close and safe between them, the good luck charm clutched tightly in his fist.

“I love you, too.”

Kairi puts her hand on the side of his neck when she pulls back, only to lean forward again to kiss the tear that has made its way down his cheek. Riku swallows and nods and carefully ties the charm to his belt, just like Sora carries his. Kairi can only grin at the symmetry, and when she looks back up to Riku, he is smiling too.

* * *

 

Sora cajoles Riku and Kairi to coming with him to Arendelle during school break, and they spend days playing in the snow, building ice forts and sliding down mountains. Sora sticks his tongue to an icicle and Kairi wrestles it off of him while Riku laughs; Kairi dumps a hand full of snow down Riku’s shirt in recompense for not helping her. They spend nights curled up together, warming each other, and if they dream, they dream together, a bright dream-scape of colour and clouds. Their hands are always cold but it’s easy to find a place to warm them, whether it be Kairi’s neck – she yelps – or Riku’s stomach – he yelps too.

It’s good, honest fun. Even when they’re in the middle of a snowball fight and Heartless spawn, turning it into a real fight, it’s still okay. Sora remembers how to trust and he yells out Riku’s name; together they fly through the air, their limit similar but changed. Where once they had wielded thirteen blades, now they only have one, the dual blade from the realm of sleep. It cuts through their enemies as easily as dragging a stick through sand, and when they’re done there are no more left and Kairi is demanding that they teach her how to do that.

Sora looks at Riku, and Riku hefts his Keyblade over his shoulder and says that they should find more Heartless. Kairi grins and agrees – and Sora finds himself nodding as well. The three of them are more than enough to deal with whatever they come across.

* * *

 

Sora joins them in Kairi’s bed more often than not now. Kairi had bought and built a bed double the size of their old one, so all of them easily fit, even when Sora steals the blankets to himself or Riku edges away from the other two to get some peace in the darkness of the night.

Sora and Kairi still dream, but Riku does not have to tear their nightmares from their hearts anymore. They curl up on either side of him and their dreams carry across to him like how you can smell a good meal from any corner of the house. He puts his arms around them and lets the scent of their dreams carry him back to sleep. There is no need for him to guard them here.

* * *

 

Kairi pushes herself in her training, but only because she wants to keep up with the effortless way that Riku and Sora handle their Keyblades. Riku grasps his with a Master’s ease, and she sees how Sora is no longer afraid of handling his Keyblade, and how he can summon it effortlessly, grinning the whole time. She spars against them and against the other Keyblade wielders – Xion is the closest matched to her in strength, and every time she and Roxas travel to the islands she makes sure to invite them to a friendly spar. Riku and Roxas get into their fights maybe a little too much, and Sora and Roxas don’t fight each other, ever, but Xion is easy-hearted and more than happy to pit herself against any of the trio.

In the end it’s Roxas who shows her how to really manipulate her light magic. He teaches her faith and salvation and pearl, and they quickly become her most powerful attacks, her natural disposition towards light aiding her immensely. She’s still more likely to rush in and try to beat things up with her Keyblade first, but she’s learning some patience; how to stand back and assess the situation and maybe cast a few spells while she’s running into the fray. It’s a learning curve, but it’s one that she’s taking to heart. Sora and Riku can’t stay ahead of her forever; and when Sora takes the Mark of Mastery test again, she’s going to be standing right by his side.

* * *

 

Naminé likes school. It’s structured and the teachers are nice to her and she’s made friends with a girl who has wild red hair and loves to sing, and a boy who is quiet and writes poetry on spare scraps of paper. She lives with her family and it all almost feels _normal._

She is not normal. Her joints squeak and she doesn’t really feel pain or heat or the cold. There is aching in her spine that has been there since she woke up in Radiant Garden. But she is not alone – Roxas and Xion are there to talk to when she wants to discuss anything about the shared strangeness of all their bodies, and Kairi is willing to listen to her when she wants to talk about her heart, and Riku is willing to sit with her when she doesn’t. Sora pulls her out to join his friends in strange, carefree adventures that make her laugh and feel included. She learns to get along with Terra and Vanitas and Isa, the ones who have been dropped into the dark and were pulled apart and used by people who forgot that they were living things, too.

Xion is the one who shows her that she truly has a heart. She feels so light when she’s with the other girl. Like when they’re together, she can show who she is, without that constant and terrible fear of someone looking over her shoulder and deciding that she is not good enough.

With Xion, it feels like enough just to be _herself._

* * *

 

Sora tells his idea to Riku, who latches onto it with a strength that Sora is surprised by. Even so, they scour the beaches of the islands for weeks until they gather what they need and a bit more, for any accidents that happen in the making of. Sora is a deft hand at synthesising materials, but that isn’t what they’re going for here.

Kairi cries when they give her the gift; a bracelet with two Thalassa shells carved down into a star and a heart, woven into opposite sides. Riku throws his arm over Sora’s shoulders and asks if she likes it; Kairi’s answering kisses are answer enough.

* * *

 

One time when Riku is leaving the library in the Land of Departure, Terra finds him and asks him for tips on how to corral and control his darkness, just like Riku has. Riku hesitates but agrees, and then finds himself aiding Terra’s search for inner peace. Sometimes they’re joined by Vanitas, who scoffs at their efforts mostly, but Riku can still tell that he’s listening to what he says. The three of them are an unlikely combination, but Riku wants to share what his painstaking journey has earned, and Terra deserves to be in control of himself. Vanitas weaves and frolics in his darkness in ways that Riku doubts he will ever be able to copy, but sometimes he gives out tips, too.

It’s a learning experience for all of them. Riku likes helping them, and he likes learning – he wonders if this is what Keyblade wielders used to be like, before they were reduced to the scant number they are now. If so, he mourns those lost wielders even more. This circle of sharing is something precious.  

* * *

 

Their limit goes like this –

Sora is always the one to initiate it, calling out across the battlefield and attracting Riku and Kairi’s attention. Riku and Kairi will bump fists before falling into an easy triangle with Sora. Riku will call up his dark magic, Kairi will call up her light magic, and both of them will lob balls of sparkling brightness or flickering darkness at Sora, who will punt them at their enemies. Then Riku will grab Kairi and the two of them will meet Sora halfway, where they all link hands and spin for a second before summoning their Keyblades once again.

Sora will put his hand over his heart and Kairi will as well, but Riku will only close his eyes. The bright light of a trinity appears on the ground, and in sync, all three of them will lift their Keyblades to the hovering ball of light above their heads, sending beams of light and dark magic out to annihilate anything still standing.

It makes them a menace on the battlefield.

* * *

 

Sora greets his parents gladly when he sees them. If it’s because he’s coming home from school or he’s just running up to his room to change into beach clothes, he no longer feels the need to be careful, to temper himself, to hold his hands back. Instead he’s as affectionate as he has ever been – throwing his arms around his father, helping his mother in the kitchen and brushing past her to get to the pantry, running out of the house in the morning with some toast between his teeth because he’s going to be late for school if he waits any longer.

His parents take it all in stride. Their happy, bouncy boy is back in their lives. He’s changed, but what child doesn’t when they grow up? And Sora has grown, definitively. His shoulders are broad and his hands are calloused and there is wisdom in his eyes. His father is grateful that he came back to them as a young man, and his mother is glad that he has kept his joy even as his trials sought to strip it from him. They watch their son, and are more than happy with what they can see.

* * *

 

Riku has always taken care of Sora. Even now, with him away from their islands on most days and Sora in school, they meet up in the afternoons and put their books down and do something a bit wild. It helps to burn off any impatient energy that Sora has earned that day by sitting through classes, and Riku has earned by sneezing twenty times while reading a single book.

If they spar, they do it with wooden swords and Kairi and sometimes Naminé will cheer them from the sidelines and it will feel like they’re ten again. All of them try to keep quiet about their abilities, but sometimes Sora gets so excited that he will just glide out of habit and Riku _likes_ using doubleflight okay? Kairi scolds them both but her heart isn’t particularly in it because she loves to air slide whenever she can.

Sometimes they will spar and sometimes they’ll race and sometimes Riku will kiss him silly because Sora is _his_ and he has always been the one to watch over him and protect him. Sora is spun energy in action, always ready and watching for the next challenge or opportunity to smile. Riku is so glad to see that; so glad to see the weight of all those battles fall off his shoulders so they can mess around like the teenagers they are.

Riku has always taken care of Sora; but now he knows that it is not a failing to let himself be taken care of as well. Sora wraps his arms around his shoulders and Riku bumps their noses together and together they’re free to do whatever they want to.

The worlds are at their mercy; luckily enough, Riku thinks that Sora has always been merciful.

* * *

 

Naminé tells Kairi about her feelings for Xion shyly, not sure of the reaction she’s going to get but achingly wanting to share this new closeness. Kairi grins at her and asks more questions; does Xion like her back _(Naminé thinks so)_ , have they kissed _(not yet)_ , how are you going to put up with Lea’s teasing _(she’s sure Xion can handle that)_. Kairi lays sprawled on Naminé’s bedroom floor and Naminé asks her about her relationship with Sora and Riku, and Kairi tells her, things about the two boys Naminé had never thought she would hear. Knowing that they are happy and healing makes her own heart settle.

“I’m glad you told me. Heh. It’s something sisters would do though, right?”

Naminé stills. She is trying to weave together string and beads like Kairi has shown her, but she thinks she’s done a knot wrong somewhere because the more she does the more it simply looks like a tangled mess.

“…sisters?”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, I never had one, but I do now. So it’s nice to do sistery things together.”

Naminé bites her lip to stop herself from betraying the warmth her heart gives at Kairi’s statement.

“Kairi?”

“Yeah?”

“I like being your sister.”

Kairi huffs and sits up. She looks at the mess in Naminé’s hands and swoops in to take it. Naminé gives it up easily, but a few seconds later Kairi gives it back, somehow untangled and almost looking finished.

“You were pulling it too tight. And Naminé? I like being your sister too.”

* * *

 

One afternoon after school, with Riku on another world, Sora leads Kairi back to the play island. They spar for a bit and then mess around on the beach, looking for shells or animals washed up by the tide, or any interesting new items hidden around the shore. Eventually they find themselves in the secret place, where he and Kairi debate over some of the drawings and what they could be. Sora says he remembers one drawing being an attempt to draw a bird; Kairi claims that if it was supposed to be a bird, then Sora’s drawing skills were far more lacking than she remembers. Sora pouts at her and Kairi kisses him, which makes him blush instead. Kairi smirks and he tries not to feel like she’s gotten the upper hand over him, again. Not that he particularly minds.

They find the old drawings that they made of each other, and Sora touches the second paopu reverently, other hand brushing against the charm at his waist. Kairi is looking thoughtfully at the drawing.

“There’s room above it.”

Sora looks, and sure enough, above the two of them is an unmarked wall. He’s not sure if he or Kairi have the idea first, but she’s the one who finds the drawing rocks, and together both of them start chipping away at the secret place wall, the heart of these islands. They bicker good naturedly over the drawing, but it’s easy enough to let Kairi do the outline and Sora shade in parts that need it.

When they leave, hands linked, there are three faces on the wall, and shooting stars connect all members of the trio.

* * *

 

Naminé still draws.

At this point, she’s unsure if it’s just a habit, or if it’s ingrained in her, or if she genuinely likes doing it. She can still rifle through the memories of Sora and those around him, even if she can’t change those memories any more, and more often than not she finds herself drawing scenes from their adventures. Sora in a deep purple cavern; Riku in a blindfold, standing in a patch of light in a forest; Kairi sitting at her desk at home, intent on the letter she is writing and planning to put into the empty bottle sitting beside her.

She doesn’t know if she could give drawing up, and she doesn’t think she wants to. It’s a part of her, just like her blonde hair and her ten toes.

Just like she still draws, Riku still uses the darkness. It’s deep-rooted in him, just like drawing is embedded in her. He’s learned how to control it and manipulate it and use it rather than let it use him, and she treats him like a role model, always consciously aware of what she is doing when she uses her powers. Just because she cannot change memories any more does not mean there isn’t another hidden power within her that she has yet to discover. She doesn’t want to hurt her friends by accident. Not after everything that they have done for her.

Riku doesn’t refuse when she asks him to pose for her, even though her drawings always come out as another boy. Even though they share the same face, her drawings of her Riku are always distinguishable from drawings of Sora and Kairi’s Riku. He never asks to see them, either. Out of all of them, sometimes she wonders if he recognizes her the most, sees her the most clearly. He’s known her for the longest, and he was a protector when she had no others. They understand each other, who they are and who they want to be and who they have been.

Naminé opens her sketchbook to a page of their first meeting and starts drawing their relationship as it stands, now.

* * *

 

Nowadays, each kiss Kairi gives Riku is a reassurance.

This kiss says: I am here.

This kiss says: I am safe.

This kiss says: you are safe.

This kiss says: nothing can hurt us anymore.

Riku kisses her back with desperation and gentleness, cradling her face between his palms and holding her like she’s the most precious thing in the world. Kairi kisses his cheeks and his nose and runs her hands through his hair and holds him close. Not because she’s afraid that he’s going to disappear – just because she loves holding him, and she trusts him, and she wants to be here, within the safe circle of his arms.

* * *

 

Naminé teaches Sora how to draw sporadically and without feeling like doom is hanging over her head. Sora squints at the page and at the crayons and at what she’s drawing and Naminé doesn’t hide her smile, directing it at him. Sora perks up under the attention and he goes back to scrawling determinedly, his nose scrunched up in a manner that Naminé can’t help but find adorable.

There’s no pressure here, on either of them. Sora is free to draw and then scratch his head at his creations, and Naminé is free to give him pointers or just lend him her art supplies. There’s no pressure. They just do it because it’s fun, and Sora likes spending time with her and Naminé likes seeing what he comes up with in his drawings.

They do it because they’re _friends._

* * *

 

Kairi sits in her customary place on the tree on the play island, overlooking the calm ocean turned gold by the sunset. Sora leans against the trunk beside her, his hands interlocked behind his head, half dozing in the peace and quiet. Riku sits with his legs hanging over the edge of the island, lazily leaning back with his eyes closed, basking in the last rays of light.

Kairi looks between them, and then back at the yellow fruit hanging from the tree, and her mouth curves upwards.

She taps at Sora’s shoulder and his eyes fly open, going even wider when he sees what she’s holding. She inclines her head towards Riku and he grins, vibrant and brighter than the sun.

Both of them touch one of Riku’s shoulders and he opens his eyes to stare at them and what they’re both holding. Kairi offers the fruit alongside Sora, and Riku’s expression goes tight for a second in a way that Kairi suspects means he is trying not to cry. He gingerly puts his hand on the star, filling in the space left by Sora and Kairi’s fingers.

Kisses, Kairi thinks slightly dizzily, are best shared, and taste even better when the sweetness of paopu fruit lingers on the lips.

* * *

 

Naminé burns with regret sometimes.

She should not have gone along with Marluxia or DiZ’s plans. She was a decisive factor in both of them – if she had refused, they would have no way to complete their work. If she’d been stronger, or harder, or wilier, maybe she could have stopped some of the terrible things that happened before they did.

But then she looks at her family, Kairi’s loudness and Riku’s determination and Sora’s leadership and wonders if they all would have become the same people she sees before her if she hadn’t.

The past is the past. Naminé is learning; and when things get too much for her, she knocks on Kairi’s door and Kairi kicks Riku out and they talk to each other like the sisters they are. Kairi is so understanding and bright and Naminé feels so safe with her. Kairi tells her that she cannot change what she has already done, but that she can learn from it, and change what she does in the future.

Naminé listens, and thinks, and acts. She will not be that scared little girl ever again. She has never been powerless – but she knows that now. That is not something anyone can take away from her.

* * *

 

There is a quiet to the islands when the sun has been set for hours and no one remains on the beach. Riku breathes in the salt and the scent of his home. No matter how far across the galaxy he might traverse, this is where his heart truly resides.

When he was younger he used to shun the dark, afraid of admitting that he was comfortable in the silky night. He acknowledges his darkness now, and is stronger for it. All people have darkness in their hearts – well, they do if they’re not Kairi. He is self-assured and confident and he knows who he is and what he wants. He is a Keyblade Master – he juggles darkness and light and he is _good_ at it, excellent in a way that he never could have thought he was capable of when he was fighting Sora with a wooden sword.

Riku breathes in the night and he loves it.

* * *

 

The summer is long and hot and Kairi is reminded of her younger days when summers meant endless days on the play island with her friends, making sandcastles, cracking open coconuts and drinking the water inside, water fights in the waterfall pool and hours of drawing in the secret place.

Summers are different now.

Roxas and Sora compete to see who can glide the furthest – Ven beats them both handily. Riku and Aqua talk about those dusty books Riku always has his nose in, and Naminé sits with Xion and Vanitas under the shade of the plants near the waterfall. Kairi digs her toes into the sand and beside her Terra looks out over the water. Lea and Isa sit on the paopu tree and Kairi thinks she might see fruit pass between their hands.

Sea salt lashes her cheeks and sprays across her lips and Kairi would have it no other way.

* * *

 

Sora never really wanted to go to other worlds.

Kairi was always somewhat curious about her past and Riku was always filled with a burning desire to see what existed beyond their shores, but Sora had been more than happy to build a raft because he was with his friends. He was happy to go along with Riku’s idea of leaving because it would mean that he would be with them, and really, that was all he was concerned with.

His power really is his friends – he has always pushed himself for them, and surprised himself most of all with some of the things he’s been able to do. Throughout his journey, Sora has found that he’s capable of amazing things, and terrible things as well. His hands are skilled, and capable, and deadly.

But they are _his_ and he chooses what he does with them. He has control over his own destiny, now.

Sora runs down the beach and throws his arms around Riku and Kairi’s shoulders. Kairi grins at him and Riku huffs a laugh at his antics and Sora feels _free._

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Sora! I'm glad I could get this done in time for Sora's birthday, he deserves healing.


End file.
